Apple blacking out vacation days during second week of October — Apple is quietly denying requests for employee vacations during the second week of October, hinting that the company currently anticipates an influx of customers to its stores around that time related to availability of its new iOS 5 and fifth-generation iPhone products.

All of life has been utterly, profoundly changed thanks to Facebook's new features, and nothing will ever be the same, and all I can do is sit here and weep at the beauty and magic that Mark Zuckerberg has brought to this world — I don't mean to overhype this, but frankly …

Barnes & Noble to launch $349 Android tablet? — The Barnes & Noble NOOK Color is one of the best-selling Android tablets in the US, even though the company positions it as a color eBook Reader first and a tablet second. Now it looks like B&N's 7 inch, $249 tablet may be getting a pricier sibling.

Therapists Are ‘Seeing’ Patients Online — THE event reminder on Melissa Weinblatt's iPhone buzzed: 15 minutes till her shrink appointment. — She mixed herself a mojito, added a sprig of mint, put on her sunglasses and headed outside to her friend's pool. Settling into a lounge chair, she tapped the Skype app on her phone.

Whether Google is a monopoly isn't the point — Much has been made of Google chairman Eric Schmidt's admission on Wednesday that the web giant might be a monopoly, during his testimony before a Senate hearing into Google's market dominance and its effect on consumers and the marketplace.

HP likely to cancel plans to spin off PC unit — Hewlett-Packard (HP) may back off from its previous announcement to spin off its PC business unit if CEO Leo Apotheker is ousted as is being reported, according to notebook makers. HP is expected to ship 37-38 million notebooks in 2011.